Oregon School for the Deaf student named state champion in statewide poetry competition
By Spencer Thomas
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SALEM, Oregon (KPTV) — A senior at Oregon School for the Deaf, Trayshun Holmes Gournaris, earned the title of state champion in Oregon’s 2022 Poetry Out Loud competition.
Last Friday, 11 students from across the state competed in the spoken-word competition, Holmes Gournaris was the only performer who recited his poems using American Sign Language.
FOX 12 sat down with Holmes Gournaris, to talk about his experience competing for the second time in the competition, and what the preparation was like prior to the virtual event.
Holmes Gournaris says he delivered three different poems, each one relating to him personally. “We started looking at them started reading through them seeing if it fits me and my signing style,” he said.
Succeeding in bringing powerful originality to each, he started with “The Song of Smoke” by W.E.B Du Bois.
He continued with “Caged Bird,” by Maya Angelou and “Silence,” by Thomas Hood.
“You know that feeling of being found in the cold, no one to help, you wanted to be involved in the world, but you couldn’t because of this quietness. How odd and lonely that would feel, I think that’s how people in the olden days would feel and that’s how I have felt too,” Holmes Gournaris said.
And as he takes on the national sector of the competition come May 1 and June 5, we asked who his biggest supporter was from the start, Holmes Gournaris replied saying his coach and teacher, Gayle Robertson.
“It means a lot to me, and it means a lot that he sees me in that way. I love Poetry Out Loud, and Trayshun was an obvious candidate for this because he has no stage fright, he’s confident in front of an audience and I could see that he was ready to burst with this kind of language,” Robertson said.
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